No-frills flamenco first-rateA gripping mix of euphoria and sorrow characterizes the dances of Noche Flamenca, a Spanish company renowned for its straightforward and unadorned approach.

With just four dancers and four musicians, the ensemble’s “flamenco puro” style dazzled the audience last night as the opening event of Flamenco Festival 2006, presented by World Music at the Cutler Majestic Theatre.

Honesty and passion took the place of big ruffled dresses, fake smiles and castanets.

Troupe’s stylish flamenco isn’t for puristsMuch the way “Riverdance” brought new fans to Irish step dance, the Madrid-based Nuevo Ballet Español seems to be popularizing flamenco. The company’s Boston debut was an accessible, slickly choreographed show called “Flamenco Directo,” featuring nine dancers and seven musicians in a suite of dances ranging from some fairly traditional duets to pieces that stretch the boundaries of the art form.

....World Music cooked up a big contrast with this year’s Flamenco Festival at the Cutler Majestic by pairing Nuevo Ballet Español with Noche Flamenca. Both companies claim to be doing traditional flamenco, but Nuevo is a would-be Riverdance entertainment whereas Noche offers only the gifted individuality of its interpreters. One outfit asks us to probe into the heart of the art. The other shows us the art’s outlines and assumes we don’t want to be taken to the depths.

Saving the Evening With a Heart-Pounding Soloby CLAUDIA LA ROCCO for the New York Times

The flamenco dancer Nélida Tirado was not billed as the main attraction for “Entresueño.” But her astounding solo provided the unexpected heart of the show, energizing what would have been an accomplished but pedestrian affair.

Flamenco audience has much to cheerby HOWARD REICH for the Chicago Tribunepublished: February 2, 2007

Representing Cante de las Minas, a long-running festival in Spain, a quartet of performers spelled out the essential vocabulary of classic flamenco. One acoustic guitarist, one singer and a duo of dancers performed a brand of flamenco that made scant concessions to modern-day idioms.

The star of the first half of the program was the dancer David Perez, whose gifts at movement are matched by a musician's sense of rhythm and phrase.

Flamenco road: Rafaela Carrasco steppin’ out from tradition....Despite centuries of tradition and influence from ancient Arabic, Moorish and Gypsy culture, right now the entire flamenco scene in Spain is characterized by experimentation. It’s rare to see huge ruffled dresses any more or even to hear the familiar clicking of castanets. Dancers usually wear sleek, understated clothing and rely more on the face and body to convey expression than on the costumes.

This flamenco troupe has family flairMADRID -- Three flamenco musicians stand sipping coffee in the doorway of a small concrete house. It’s a sunny December afternoon in the Spanish capital, and they’re waiting for the dancer/choreographer Rafaela Carrasco to arrive for a rehearsal of “Una Mirada al Flamenco” (“A Glimpse of Flamenco”). She’ll present the dance with her company, Compañía Rafaela Carrasco, in the troupe’s Boston debut at the Cutler Majestic Theater tomorrow through Sunday.

The house lights go down and the audience at the Cutler Majestic feels the opening space of the stage rather than seeing it. In this darkness you hear rapid foot taps and the theater fills with suspenseful breathing. The shape of a body emerges in a spill of light, shoulders thrusting up and down in alternation, a ribcage weaving from side to side, white arms angling out. You hear finger clicks, stamps, no music.

Although passion is often associated with its first cousin, love, it is really much more. Plenty of people feel love, but not everyone experiences the intensity of passion. Frequently, passion has nothing whatsoever to do with the relationship between two people. For example, you can love your spouse, but feel passion for a pair of beaded sling-back shoes.

With no particular fondness for shoes, I am open to other kinds of passion, such as the kind that accompanies flamenco dancing at La Taza de Café in Oakland. Every other Friday night, dancers take the stage. While watching the performers, it is hard not to feel their passion. To be clear, I am not referring to their feelings for one another, but to the intense emotion revealed in the dance itself.

Flamenco rhythms drive Peña’s troupeThe art form of flamenco may be centuries old, but guitarist Paco Peña and his talented company of dancers and musicians make it seem completely of the moment, bringing a contemporary sensibility and riveting immediacy to the tradition.

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